D.I.R.T. Festival 2025: Dance In Revolt(ing) Times

D.I.R.T. Festival 2025 – Dance In Revolt(ing) Times
Come Hell Or High Water
The D.I.R.T. Festival is back – here to hold a mirror up to today’s troubling times and to imagine a better tomorrow! Join us for two weekends, three distinct programs featuring the work of NAKA Dance Theater, Tammy Hall & Latanya Tigner, La Mezcla, Embodiment Project, Georges Lammam & Jeanette Cool, Sara Shelton Mann, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Gina Picaldo, and the Abortion Monologues.
WEEK 1: OCT 25-26
Saturday – Sunday, 2:30pm and 4:30pm
Fugitivity by NAKA Dance Theater
WEEK 2: OCT 30-NOV 2
Thursday-Saturday 7:30pm, Sunday 6pm
Program A (Thurs & Sat): Tammy Hall and Latanya Tigner, The Abortion Monlogues, Georges Lammam & Jeanette Cool
Program B (Fri & Sun): Sara Shelton Mann, Embodiment Project, Gina Picaldo, La Mezcla (Sun only), Guillermo Gomez Pena (Fri only)
Tickets:
$30 - General Admission, if you have a little more
$25 - General Admission, if you have a little less
If finances are tight, please email [email protected] for a discount code.

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ABOUT WEEK 1
Oct 25-26: Sat-Sun, 2:30pm & 4:30pm
FUGITIVITY by Naka Dance Theater

NAKA Dance Theater’s Fugitivity is an interdisciplinary performance project exploring the theme of fugitivity: Who has lost the ability to move freely? Who is forced to flee? How can we respond creatively to xenophobia and the threat of mass deportations? What underground networks are keeping people safe?

The project centers the revolutionary capacity of improvisation to challenge and shift structures of power, hierarchy and oppression. An eight-member artistic cohort will engage in an immersive process of experimentation, generating and exploring structures within which movement, sound, visual imagery, video and storytelling interact to interrogate systems of power and imagine new possibilities for the future.

Woven throughout this work is an exploration of the parallels and connections between the Underground Railroad and contemporary networks of people, places, and information that currently exist to support immigrants and other “fugitives”. With the increased dangers of deportation and xenophobia in our socio-political climate, these networks and systems are simultaneously being strengthened and are under threat.

Created and performed by: Juan Manuel Aldape Muñoz, Amelia Uzategui Bonilla, Cristina Lopez Suarez, Krhistina Giles, Music Research Strategies (Marshall Trammell), Oka Ver, Jose Ome Mazatl and Debby Kajiyama, with video and object design by Ian Winters. Lighting design by Jose Maria Francos.

ABOUT WEEK 2: PROGRAM A
Oct 30 & Nov 1: Thurs & Sat, 7:30pm

Dance Mission Theater's Liberation Academy presents this first installment of Rock In A Weary Land, featuring a new collaboration between choreographer/dance ethnographer Latanya d. Tigner and musical director, Tammy L. Hall. This new dance and music work investigating the influence of Black American protest dance and music on contemporary dance forms like House and Hip Hop through intersecting lenses of dance cyphers and Afrofuturism. We start by looking at the largely unknown influence of Gullah Geechee dance and music, exploring a cultural continuum from the peoples of the Gullah Islands to Black social dance in the Bay Area today.

The Abortion Monologues based on reserach by Stella Adelman and directed by Krissy Keefer features actors Deb'e Taylor, Cat Brooks, Sierra Tiatia, and Stella Adelman as women tell their own experience with abortion.

Georges Lammam, of Palestinian descent, was born in Beirut, Lebanon. The second of three brothers who are professional musicians, he is a solo violinist exemplifying the Arab style of instrumental improvisation. His repertoire spans a wide range of Arabic music, form classical to contemporary popular songs. Having performed with the most well-known singers of the Middle East, his reputation as an instrumental accompanist with a strong command of maqamat precedes him. He wil be joined by Jeanette Cool on piano.

About Week 2: Program B
Oct 31 & Nov 2: Fri 7:30pm, Sun 6pm

Sara Shelton Mann is celebrated as being one of the most exciting contemporary choreographers of our time. She says, "My art is of a piece with my healing work and political engagement: it is meant to reveal and transmit the story of our collective humanity—our potential for excellence, our danger—in a time of global change, chaos, and paradigm shift. It is an antidote to fear, doubt, and greed as the face of who we are."

La Mezcla (Sun only) is a polyrhythmic, San Francisco-based dance and music ensemble rooted in Chicana, Latina and Indigenous traditions and social justice. Founded in 2015 by Dance/USA artist fellow Vanessa Sanchez, their work brings together Tap dance, Son Jarocho and Afro-Caribbean rhythms to bring the often unseen histories and experiences of communities of color to stages, streets and fields.

Embodiment Project serves to uplift the ancestral and primordial power of dance as an act of resistance, collective healing and social transformation. Founded in 2008 by Nicole Klaymoon, Embodiment Project celebrates Black social dances and street dance forms, recognizing them as healing modalities. They also draw on other dance traditions, including modern dance, and use choreo poetry, documentary theater, live song, and video art to articulate and hold stories of liberation.

Guillermo Gómez-Peña (Fri only) is a performance artist, writer, radical pedagogue, Public Citizen, and activist against all borders. An intellectual Coyote (Nanabush), he has been fighting colonialism since 1492. He is the Artistic Director of international arts organization, La Pocha Nostra, that mixes experimental aesthetics, activist politics, Spanglish humor, and audience participation.

Gina Picaldo is a performance artist and director of Nativa Women Productions, offering unique presentations of contemporary dance, theatre and poetry.

Host or Publisher Dance Mission Theater